Too Many NPCs!

[Retech]

So I am GMing this game, and over the course of a while, I have added several NPCs without really noticing their number. Usually they are a bit stronger than the PCs, but now I feel like they might be stealing the spotlight a bit.

I have already killed one of them off, but if too many die suddenly, it would seem suspiscious. What should I do?

[Kaje]

What would be suspicious about it?

[jindra34]

So I am GMing this game, and over the course of a while, I have added several NPCs without really noticing their number. Usually they are a bit stronger than the PCs, but now I feel like they might be stealing the spotlight a bit.

I have already killed one of them off, but if too many die suddenly, it would seem suspiscious. What should I do?

Have them go off and take on tasks that are beyond the PCs, or other forms of offscreen adventuring. Have them get drafted by a city guard/mage guild/army/what not. Essentially there are better ways to write a character out of a story than simply killing them.

[Diefje]

Make them go evil (corrupted by some higher power, bribed, was in it all along, jealous of their phat lewtz...) and have your PCs kill them for you!

[JaronK]

Have them deal with some major threat while the PCs do a side quest to support them. PCs are supposed to bring in back up to clean things out at the end. But then the major threat turns out to be much worse, and while the PCs are clearing out the side quest, the NPCs are slaughtered and the PC's home base is also destroyed. Now it's only up to the PCs.

JaronK

[Chained Birds]

If some of the NPCs have the Mercantile Background feat have them join up for roughly a year and buy their way to retirement with billions of gold pieces worth of magic items (Note: this only works in mid-high magic worlds).

[Zeta Kai]

Use them as Red Shirts to show the PCs just how dangerous the current situation is. Its exposition without the talking!

[gbprime]

I'll run 1 or 2 NPC's with the party at any given time, but which ones tend to vary. Some of them are plot hooks, some of them fill a party role (like "person who casts the healing spells in combat"), some are liabilities... but the best are all of the above. :smallamused:

I tend to run the NPCs as either as-powerful or less-powerful than the PCs. The as-powerfuls tend to level as the PC's do, even if they're not around, while the less-powerfuls level only when the plot requires it.

There are lots of NPCs who are more powerful than the PC's at the beginning of the campaign, but you won't find them travelling with the PCs, you find them hiring them or advising them instead. (Known powerful people are busy, and always in need of someone to run errands.) As the PC's level up, they almost always catch up to or even surpass said powerful NPCs, as I think it's important for the players to feel like they're accomplishing something, that they can shape the flow of events in the world (or blow them up... they are PC's, after all).